The New York Restaurant That Should Be On The World's Best Restaurant List

Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns is not a restaurant. It's an epic, ten years in the making.

The cast of animals, vegetables, and minerals at the 80-acre farm north of Manhattan includes two guard dogs (big and scruffy), 123 sheep, 180 pigs, 700 turkeys, 100 geese (the goslings are particularly adorable), 6000 chickens (for the table), 1200 hens (for laying), 33 colonies of honeybees, 65 fruit and nut trees, six acres of vegetables, one acre each of grain, raspberries, and flowers, a 22,000-square-foot greenhouse, six pastures, four barns, two silos, and four tractors. If you're wondering about cows, as I did after not seeing any, I was told that a few were grazing on neighboring fields but none are currently in residence at Stone Barns.

Is it any wonder, with all that to coordinate and care for, that Blue Hill has required a heroic length of time to reach its potential? The Trojan War lasted ten years. Odysseus spent the same time making his way back to Ithaca. Very few restaurants have such resolve. We live in a meek era when nine out of ten don't survive that long, and the few that do rarely improve. Yet Blue Hill has painstakingly evolved into the restaurant it was surely destined to become.

The process has been thoughtful and deliberate. Over the years, whenever I dined there and merely admired the food rather than taking joy from it, I wondered if it would ever become exceptional. I always looked forward to the raw, home-grown vegetables that led off every dinner. I loved walking the grounds. I appreciated the big, comfortable tables in the high-ceilinged dining room, which seemed much like a barn because it originally was one, the milking barn for the dairy farm of the Rockefeller estate. Blue Hill was unique, but that wasn't quite enough. Now I understand, and perhaps I should have much earlier: This is a restaurant that belongs to the seasons and the earth and the terroir, which go about their business in a very purposeful way.

Five years ago Barber received the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef in America, honored as our best. I asked him recently if perhaps that was premature, and he agreed. I'm not certain that's because he believes I was right or because he is not one to proclaim his own greatness. He tends to speak more highly of animals and vegetables than of himself, and he does so eloquently. He has always been among our most articulate chefs. It is only now that he can be thought of as one of our finest.

The triumphant evolution of Blue Hill climad this past May, when the restaurant established the fid-price menu called Grazing, Pecking, Rooting as its sole dining option, setting the price at $198. It is served informally yet ceremoniously, and it feels fluid, effortless and sure-handed, not at all like the well-meaning but deadpan dishes of earlier days, classically arranged with meat as the centerpiece. People who try the new menu for the first time tend to ask questions, the majority wondering how many courses they'll get. The answer: As many as they want. A friend who came with me earlier this year for a meal similar to the new menu said, "This makes Thanksgiving look like a snack."

The other inevitable question, Barber told me, comes along about 15 tastes into the meal—I believe "tastes" is defined as finger-food, what is eaten before the forks and knives arrive. The question: "I love all this, but when do we get some meat?"

Those early nibbles can be astonishing, vegetables at their best. The first ones arrive at your table spiked, on a long board, reminiscent of the way primitive cultures impaled the heads of vanquished enemies. I've always thought the imagery was deliberate, Barber's way of making clear that this was a working farm, not a fantasyland. Sentimentality is not a component of a farmer's workday.

Among the vegetables I had at the most recent dinner was a radish so complex and with such a range of sweetness and spiciness that it brought to mind an opera diva ornamenting a melody line. After that came an orion fennel, rightly named after the constellation, so celestial was its flavor. When I mentioned to Barber that I'd been moved by fennel—fennel!—he matter-of-factly explained, "It was simply its time of year, maybe its week." There was a fabled mokum carrot (perhaps a little before its peak), asparagus identified as "the season's last," and then a plate of firsts: cucumbers, edible flowers, tomatoes, and crunchy shadberries, obscure and perhaps included so we wouldn't think everything could easily be grown in our own backyards. Those berries are traditional to the Hudson Valley and named long ago for the Hudson River shad that spawn at the time the berries ripen. We had a rhubarb spritzer that would delight the Manhattan fashion-week crowd and made me realize, finally, the real purpose of rhubarb. Then came a mini-bower of edible weeds, edible flowers, and pea shoots suitable for dragging through tarragon puree.

At no time was I wondering when meat would arrive, but inasmuch as others do, here is how Barber answers that question: "But we have meat in almost every course." He pretty much does, not in vast quantities and occasionally in ways you might not expect, but it's there and it's wonderful—in particular the pig-heart pastrami.

Many of the great restaurants of our time revolutionized how customers think about eating. The first to do so was Ferran Adrià's elBulli, in Spain. He deconstructed dishes and (unintentionally) popularized molecular gastronomy. Then came René Redzepi's Noma, with New Nordic cuisine, an emphasis on foraging, and a cadre of amiable chefs carrying food from kitchen to customer. These sorts of restaurants are becoming more popular, the trend is accelerating, but few have a message as insightful, expansive, and fundamental as Blue Hill's: We will tell you a story of the earth, and we will feed you wonderfully while doing so.

The food is very American, very wholesome, and minimally seasoned—deceptively basic, in fact. It is both fundamental and ephemeral, each course coming quickly and eaten rapidly, sometimes leaving a sense of loss, because it was so appealing and there for so brief a time. The thrills, and they are continuous, come from the presentations, the combinations, and the surprises—you will almost certainly eat plant life or animal parts you have never tried before.

Not every dish transfid me, but there were few of those. The first in that category was also the first protein I received, a Long Island clam topped with a marinated spring onion, too aggressive for this very gentle repast. Nor am I inclined to praise celtuce, an obscure and stemmy green that showed up in consecutive courses, proving that it can disappoint in multiple ways. I should mention that while I loved elBulli and Noma, both superlative restaurants, I liked about 75 percent of the dishes at the former and about 90 percent at the latter. Restaurants such as these serve too many courses to please every palate with every dish.

Blue Hill gets its multitude of products from its home property, from Barber's family farm in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and from 40 other individual farms. When I heard that, I imagined silos groaning with grain, fields overrun with livestock, unlimited provisions rooted in the ground or frolicking in the meadows, a living pantry of products, all there for the taking. As you can tell from that confession, I know little about farming. It seems the natural world is not a convenience store, awaiting a call from Barber.

Most high-end restaurants in fact do operate that way. They need only pick up the telephone at the end of service, place an order, and all desired groceries will arrive by truck the next morning, sometimes sooner. In his new book, titled The Third Plate, Barber explains the near-impossibility of operating a restaurant like Blue Hill with a conventional a la carte menu, every guest picking whatever he desires. He describes the problem in terms of lamb chops, which come three to a portion. Three slaughtered lambs will result in a total of 48 chops, enough for 16 orders. He writes, "After months of work, years of grass management, a four-hour round-trip to the slaughterhouse, and a butcher breaking down the animals with the patience and skill of a surgeon, we had sold out in the time it takes to eat a hot dog."

Speaking of hot dogs, and I will, they were on the menu the night I dined there. Mid-meal, we were instructed to get up, leave our table, and stroll to an outdoor patio, where the chef de cuisine, Michael Gallina, was cooking beetfurters—half beets, the rest pork and scraps of beef—over bone char, a charcoal made from bones, fallen tree limbs and other organic leftovers. The hot dog was nestled inside a brioche bun, which rested on a cloth napkin, which itself was placed inside a tiny wooden box made of balsa wood, the kind used for model airplanes during my childhood. The beetdog was sweet, soft, juicy, and festive, so perfect one of my friends suggested we forego the remainder of the meal, invoke the extra-courses option, and spend the rest of the evening on the patio, eating nothing but beetfurters. The brioche bun, equally appealing, was made with wheat grown in Seattle by a breeder who is participating in a project to create Barber wheat, perhaps a year away from fruition. Barber said to me, "I want to win the Nobel Prize for Barber wheat."

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When we first were seated, our waitress handed each of us a little booklet describing the seasonal harvests at Stone Barns. The booklet is cute, a lovely keepsake, but unnecessary. As one of the people eating with me said, "The food tells the story beautifully."

Service at Blue Hill used to be quite formal, the staff practically standing at attention, but that is no longer the case. Dining out is no longer merely about eating. It started being just as much about entertainment years ago, but only now are restaurants accentuating that aspect of service, creating a performance with customer participation. At Blue Hill that means guests move about, chat with the staff, and all-but-applaud the inventive presentations of food, so exhilarating they're practically production numbers.

Our waitress, Christine, said the all-you-can-eat policy meant that meals could last for six hours and sometimes people at a table will get up and go home while their more stalwart friends remain behind, wanting more. We asked her if the unlimited food policy didn't make Blue Hill a little like a buffet, and she explained how it differed: "The food is delivered to the table, and you are not given plastic cups that you can bring up to the soda dispenser."

Our meal lasted a mere four hours. By my count we had 30 courses, but that's essentially a meaningless statistic. The courses ranged from an array of vegetables to that single clam to a plate of three cuts of salt-roasted pig, one of them the definitive entry in the category of unforeseen animal parts—the eye socket. (Supremely tender, I have to say.) I would further point out, since meat quantity seems to be an issue, that in addition to the beetfurter and the aforementioned pieces of pork, we had a whole charcuterie-style sausage that we sliced ourselves, coppa (thin slices of shoulder meat made from a cross between a Berkshire pig and a Ossabaw pig, and so permeated with succulent fat you should not ask if everything served at Blue Hill is good for you, because this product could not be), cured goose breast, a smidgeon of Berkshire ham on a vegetable cracker, bits of beef heart (combined with cattail shoots, not a triumph), and lamb belly (more fat, if that is your wish, as it always is mine).

Another favorite of mine, not quite part of the meat mentality but not that far removed from it, was elderflower and sea bean tempura. The frying was so superb that one of my friends likened it to "farm-fresh funnel cake." I demanded to know the name of the cook who made it, the true genius in the kitchen. Said Barber, "Me. I'm the fry cook. I do that all night." He said he learned from the French chef Michel Rostang when he worked in Paris. "The French know how to fry," Barber added, "and Rostang is a master."

All these courses, animal and vegetable, are presented in or set upon a countless array of boards, bowls, and the like. Almost nothing is laid flat on a plate. Each table will see about 50 different sorts of serving paraphernalia, a modern version of the effort once undertaken by three-star Michelin restaurants in France to collect antiques suitable for the presentation of their array of post-meal petits fours.

We made a second excursion during our dinner, this one to the manure shed, the most charming spot I've ever been that bears such a label. Manure, as vital to the farm as ever, is no longer collected and stored here, a fact you might be pleased to learn should you have a reservation to dine at Blue Hill. The animals spend their days in the fields rather than in a barn, and they fertilize the soil as they rotate through the pastures. We had several courses in the shed, seated at a long wooden table, looking out at the fields and the fireflies though an open door that once received the horse-drawn wagons used for the collection and distribution of manure.

The most startling dish served here was called green garden gazpacho. It was made with sweet peas and might well be the most alluring cold green drink in a world filled with unpleasant cold-pressed green juices. Here we also ate fresh ricotta, made minutes earlier and as good as any artisanal brand from Brooklyn, accompanied by chunks of meaty chicken mushroom, which grow wild and reach the size of a carry-on suitcase.

Dessert centered around strawberries. Come to think of it, strawberries also accompanied the pig parts, a fascinating sweet-and-savory combination, sugary fruit with succulent meat. The array of desserts, which I have counted as one course, included a Hydrox-like filled cookie with a chocolate cream center, the cookie mode mostly with buckwheat flour, unrealistic but true. That cookie combined with the milk ice cream was an ideal conclusion to the meal, and Barber says he ends his workday in a similar fashion. "The ice cream is what I eat every night, the best way to end a stressful day. It's better than a vodka tonic."

Tasting menus, as we know, are increasingly popular. They are prevalent at chef-driven restaurants, both the smaller ones that are little more than one man, his stove, and a culinary vision, and at higher-end palaces such as Eleven Madison Park, which offers a single, multi-course tasting menu, much like Blue Hill. Such restaurants tend not to have signature dishes that encapsulate the chef's style, but rather the entire menu presents the diner with a comprehensive experience. A snapshot of a single dish doesn't do justice to the presentations or the effort. Blue Hill's menu differs from some in that it is not intended to reflect the cuisine of the Hudson Valley, the way Noma represents the Nordic countries and Eleven Madison Park interprets New York City, past and present. After all, the Hudson Valley never really had a cuisine, at least not one different from the rest of early America.

A meal at Blue Hill represents the products and the landscape of today's Hudson Valley, plus the commitment of Barber and Stone Barns. It is, Barber told me, a curated menu, one that deliberately avoids showcasing only elite products but instead encompasses every aspect of the region, that which is grown, foraged, or raised. To him, that's what farm-to-table must become, a balancing act that "puts the brakes on gluttony."

As always, Dan Barber continues to be the best of men. I am now convinced that he is also the best of chefs.

Rating: Four Stars.

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Blue Hill at Stone Barns is the restaurant of the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, once part of the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills. A modest self-service commissary offers lunch to visitors, but the restaurant serves only dinner. The property is flawless, the Disneyland of farms, beautiful and pristine.

As you drive in via the winding road, look for the cement post on the right inscribed with the words David's Drive, named for David Rockefeller Jr., who donated the land and the property.

Note the 1950's tractor beside the road. It once belonged to Peggy Dulany, daughter of David Rockefeller.

Visit the greenhouse, really a string of buildings, where vegetables don't merely grow, they glow, seemingly impervious to bugs and disease. Note the nesting sparrows, which have taken over one corner.

Walk up to the sheep, ravenously eating grass until, almost as one, they lay down in the shade and sleep. You need not beware of the guard dogs. They seem to know the threat level at Stone Barns is Defcon 5.

Drink Rieslings, which are abundant on the extensive wine list. Rieslings are the perfect wine for vegetables, and for all manner of cured and softly cooked meats. You will require nothing else—although there are an abundance of other varietals should you desire diversity.

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